quality vs. quantity

I have a confession to make. I used to purposefully buy cheap watches. Instead of saving my money to by a watch that would last for a long time I instead bought $10 watches from places like Ardene, Walmart, and Target every single spring.

That’s right, every year I would buy a cheap watch that by the time that the battery died the next year it was falling apart so badly that I would rather buy another cheap watch than buy a new battery and keep that item going.

I liked that I got to change up my look a little bit every year and never really thought about how bad this was for the environment and how wasteful it was, but I didn’t really think about any of those things back then.

The last watch that I bought was in the summer of 2017 at a Target in North Dakota on our way to Medicine Hat, Alberta. It again wasn’t much more than $10 and it was really not the best quality. It has stuck around for almost two years because I have been determined for it to last as long as possible. Nigel has glued both straps back to the face, the small strap has fallen off, and now the strap has split. As much as I would like to keep this one going it was really starting to show its lack of quality and it was starting to look worse than I could fix.

I knew that the next watch that I wanted to buy had to be different and so I started to research ethical and sustainable watches. I searched for a long time and did a lot of research (as well as my husband) and I finally settled on the brand Tense. This watch company makes it watches by hand near where I live and uses sustainable wood for the face. I also loved that they had the ability to customize a watch to the exact face and strap that I wanted.

Tense makes every single one of their watches as they are ordered which I like as there isn’t a oversupply of watches. This also meant that I was able to get my watch personalized to me. This is technically a third anniversary present (which isn’t until August) which is traditionally the leather anniversary and Nigel wanted to do something special for this.

We combined the anniversary with my love of libraries by putting the dewey decimal number for marriage traditions with a acknowledgement to this being our third anniversary out of eternity. I love how it looks carved into the wood back and how sleek and clean the whole watch looks.

In the past week of wearing this watch it is amazing how much I can tell the difference in quality of this watch over all of my previous ones as well as how much more I care about this watch.

Sometimes we have to pay a bit more to get something that has quality and is made ethically and with sustainable materials. This money is made up by how long you can own these items however and I am excited to own this watch for a very long time.